According to people familiar, groups within SpaceXAI - the AI arm of the company - have looked into purchasing datasets from distressed or shuttered startups as a lower-cost path to bolster training data. These discussions are informal and might never result in an agreement, according to the people, who asked not to be named because the information is not public.
SpaceXAI, formerly called xAI, is competing with Anthropic PBC and OpenAI in an effort to secure more business clients. Like its competitors, it is chasing high quality data to lift performance across tasks. Some of the people said the team is specifically eyeing operational data and customer records to help train Grok, as well as other models.
That would mark a shift from its earlier reliance on data from Musk's social platform X and a roster of in-house specialists called AI tutors. The tutor group is still in the mix, helping engineers sharpen models in niche areas like finance, science and even humor.
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The AI tutor team has weathered departures and strategy pivots. Bloomberg News reported in June that hiring for AI tutors was paused, and leadership later changed. Jack Garabedian, a longtime SpaceX staffer who worked at Starlink, recently took the reins, succeeding college aged engineer Diego Pasini, Bloomberg previously reported. People familiar said Garabedian has tried to settle frustrations by putting in place clearer processes, regular check ins and explicit goals for AI training data.
An internal July newsletter seen by Bloomberg News touted progress on a fresh AI model and a coding agent. It noted, "None of these land as polished products without the quiet, exacting work of annotation, preference alignment and validation that happens every day on this team."
This approach mirrors Google's offer to acquire Spirit Airlines' business data for AI training following the shutdown of operations at the low-cost airline. That $10 million bid triggered data privacy concerns, with former flight attendants among those sounding the alarm. Even as SpaceXAI weighs more external datasets, it still draws from inside Musk's wider operations, including employee information. At a recent meeting, Musk told SpaceX staff, "We are going to be training Grok on the sum total of all SpaceX information," adding, "It'll be trained on you."
For your wallet, here is the signal: the AI edge is increasingly about who can access rich, specialized data. The companies that secure it can build better tools faster, which can change the software on your desk and the price you pay for it.
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